News Brief

5:50 am

Mon May 23, 2011

Top Morning Stories May 23, 2011

Texas budget negotiators are continuing work Monday to finalize a state budget bill for 2012-2013.

Photo by Callie Hernandez for KUT.

Back to Work on the Budget

Texas lawmakers get back to work today on the state’s budget for the next two years. House and Senate negotiators have reached an overall budget agreement but are still working on the details in areas such as public education and higher education. There are a few other bills, including a school finance bill, lawmakers have to pass for the state’s budget to balance. The regular legislative session ends next Monday, May 30.

AISD Planning to Rework Facility Master Plan

The Austin School District's Board is scheduled to consider a timeline tonight to rework a Facility Master Plan. The plan is a ten-year strategy for managing AISD's campuses and other buildings. The district's superintendent is trying to resurrect the existing plan to make it more acceptable to the community.

Some parents, students and teachers were worried about an option to close nine schools. Under the new timeline, district staff would have until September to present a first draft of a revised Facility Master Plan that wouldn't be voted on until November.

Teammate Speaks out Against Armstrong

More suspicion has been cast on Austin cyclist and seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. A former teammate told CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday that Armstrong not only used performance enhancing drugs, but he also encouraged other teammates to do so. The Associated Press has more on the "60 Minutes" report:

New revelations from Lance Armstrong's former teammates on "60 Minutes," combined with recent requests by federal authorities for evidence in France, have fed a sense of growing trouble for the world's most famous cyclist.

One of Armstrong's former teammates, Tyler Hamilton, told "60 Minutes" he saw the seven-time Tour de France winner use EPO during his first Tour victory in 1999. Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported that last month that federal investigators looking into the Armstrong case recently asked French authorities to turn over evidence, including Armstrong's urine samples from the same year.

Armstrong continues to deny he ever used performance-enhancing substances.